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What Apple's Battery Health 'Fix' Looks Like (bgr.com)

Apple has released new battery health features in iOS 11.3 beta 2, which was seeded to developers today. BGR reports what those battery health functions look like, and how to disable power management if you're using an older iPhone: The feature is contained within a new "Battery Health" menu, which is under the "Battery" tab on iOS 11.3. The page only really has two fields: Maximum Capacity, which shows what percentage of the original charge your battery can still hold; and Peak Performance Capacity, which tells you if your phone's performance is being throttled due to the battery. Right now, there are no options to change anything within the menu. Maximum Capacity should be at 100% for newer phones, and it should fall down to around 80% over the course of about two years of normal use. A Redditor on the iOSBeta forum uploaded a photo of his iPhone 7, which is sitting at 87% capacity. That device still shows peak performance.

On older devices with a worse battery, the phone will show that reduced Maximum Capacity, as well as detail any performance slowdowns due to the decreased battery capacity. On devices that have weaker batteries, the Peak Performance Capability will change to read "This iPhone has experienced an unexpected shutdown because the battery was unable to deliver the necessary peak power. Performance management has been applied to help prevent this from happening again." A small blue hyperlink then says "Disable," which lets you manually turn off your iPhone's performance management.

69 comments

  1. Bad battery tech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How is it that Apple's shitty battery technology can lose 20% of its capability over 2 years while my Tesla manages to maintain its range and performance?

    1. Re: Bad battery tech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      probably because you never leave your moms basement so your phone gets a workout and you donâ(TM)t have a Tesla

    2. Re:Bad battery tech by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

      uh... 20% loss after two years is not bad!

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    3. Re:Bad battery tech by nonBORG · · Score: 1

      One charge per day lets say so 2 years is around 700 cycles. This is pretty good, but time to replace the battery if that means you have not enough charge to make it through 1 day.

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    4. Re:Bad battery tech by GoRK · · Score: 2

      See my comment below; if you drove your Tesla down to 0% and cycled it to 100% every day (or even multiple times per day) it wouldnt last any longer than your phone. Also, your car undoubtadely has lost a little range over time, though depending on which car you have (and if you have a sw limited battery) you may not have any indication of this. Tesla is very good at managing battery health and encouraging drivers to do the same. But if your cellphone worked the same way you would hate it.

    5. Re:Bad battery tech by SlaveToTheGrind · · Score: 1

      How is it that Apple's shitty battery technology can lose 20% of its capability over 2 years while my Tesla manages to maintain its range and performance?

      For starters, because you very likely don't charge and discharge your Tesla battery nearly as (a) often, (b) quickly, and (c) deeply as does the typical iPhone user. It's primarily the frequency and character of charge/discharge cycles that degrade the performance of Li-ion batteries, not so much the time on the calendar.

    6. Re:Bad battery tech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      500-1000 charge cycles is pretty much standard and normal for a LiPoly battery before hitting 80% capacity. Seems like Apple is bang in line with the industry.

    7. Re:Bad battery tech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    8. Re:Bad battery tech by Immerman · · Score: 1

      Hey, I would *love* a cellphone that worked that way - provided it had 2-3x the raw capacity to deliver the same or higher effective battery life. With the added thickness, maybe I could even buy a phone as durable as the old flip-phones used to be. And it'd be nice if it actually could go down to "real zero" in a pinch, though obviously doing so on a regular basis would defeat the point.

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    9. Re:Bad battery tech by jblues · · Score: 2

      Because a Tesla and other (but not all) Electric vehicles have battery conditioning technology that is not economical or practical (with regards to weight) on mobile devices.

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    10. Re:Bad battery tech by dgatwood · · Score: 0

      ... if you drove your Tesla down to 0% and cycled it to 100% every day (or even multiple times per day) it wouldnt last any longer than your phone.

      But cell phones leave some charge in the bottom as a cushion, just like you do with your car, and typically after you charge them fully, they start using power immediately and draining the batteries, so you aren't leaving them completely full, either. So really, the usage pattern is not that different from your car; it is just accelerated by maybe a factor of 3 or 4. If Tesla batteries typically lost 20% of their capacity in 6 years, Tesla owners would likely be burning down the headquarters.

      IMO, the main reason that the iPhone has such poor battery health is the same reason as all the other problems with the iPhone: It is too d**n thin. The thinner a device, the harder it is to dissipate heat, and the harder it is to get the battery far enough away from the main sources of heat to avoid it being negatively impacted by them.

      This problem is further compounded by people wrapping the devices in cases because they find razor-thin cell phones too hard to grip. Suddenly, the heat is even more intense, because it is even more completely contained within the device.

      For this reason, the harder you use a cell phone or other mobile device (even if you're on AC power most of the time and rarely discharge the battery much at all), the fewer years your battery will last.

      And of course, the thinness also limits the capacity of the battery, which means folks run down the batteries to much closer to empty than they otherwise might, which almost certainly doesn't help. But I digress.

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    11. Re:Bad battery tech by gTsiros · · Score: 1

      > The thinner a device, the harder it is to dissipate heat

      you sure about that?

      because for a given volume the surface area increases if you decrease one dimension

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    12. Re:Bad battery tech by GoRK · · Score: 1

      Im not going to argue with you against the ridiculousness of the thin phone craziness, but the heat has a lot less to do with it than the crazy charge cycles. The charging and discharging of a phone battery cell is pushed very much further than the cells in a Tesla battery. For one the phone battery is always pushed to 100% charge and it is kept there for extended periods of time. That is basically battery rule #1 in critical lithium systems; this is the reason that Tesla advises you not to do it and the reason the DJI drone batteries self discharge.

      Granted the usage pattern of a phone or laptop is quite a bit different, and the cells have indeed gotten very good. As to how much "above" the 100% mark and below the 0% mark the battery's true capacity is, i'm not sure. But I think we can agree that putting in a 30% larger battery and not letting people use the top and bottom 15% of the capacity would be quite agreeable to many.

    13. Re: Bad battery tech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's based on number of times recharged.

      If it only dropped 20%, then the person simply wasn't using his super pricy phone at all and could have easily bought a budget phone.

      It's funny how done commenters here report how their standby time is great... I never go anywhere near it on my Galaxy s7 because i actually use mine quite a bit.

      I'll bet those 20%ers bought a gps navigation unit and refuse to use their phone

    14. Re: Bad battery tech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LG X Charge (US Model, called the X Power 2 everywhere else) has a 4500mAh battery. I get 3 _days_ minimum.

    15. Re:Bad battery tech by dgatwood · · Score: 1

      you sure about that?

      I'm reasonably sure, yes. Air is a good insulator. Empty space between components, therefore, reduces thermal transmission between components. The best way to keep CPU heat away from the battery is to leave more space between the battery and hot components. You have two choices for doing that: make the phone bigger or make it thicker. But making it bigger means a bigger screen, which means more power consumption all around, which means more heat. Making it thicker doesn't have that problem. I suppose it does make the battery have less surface area per unit volume, which might require decreasing the charge speed to keep that from overheating the battery, but then again, you have the option of making the battery have significantly more capacity, which would mean being able to leave larger margins at the top and bottom, fewer charge cycles, shallower discharge, etc., all of which I would expect to reduce the battery's self-heating.

      because for a given volume the surface area increases if you decrease one dimension

      Yes, but heat sinking isn't purely about surface area. It's also about the mass of the heat sink itself. The less material you have to sink the heat, the less heat you can sink into it, which means that heat has to go somewhere. Some of it goes into the battery. A thicker, heavier case, then, could sink more heat, averaging out the amount of heat that reaches the battery and thus reducing the temperature spikes that can cause so much damage to batteries.

      Also, larger cases could allow them to consider alternative chemistries with lower densities that are less temperature sensitive (e.g. Lithium-Iron Phosphate), not to mention less likely to catch fire.

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    16. Re: Bad battery tech by Immerman · · Score: 1

      Hmm, that's not bad. I still miss the old days when I charged my flip-phone maybe once a week.

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      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    17. Re:Bad battery tech by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

      uh... 20% loss after two years is not bad!

      That is EXTREMELY pessimistic.

      My iPhone 6 Plus, which is over 3 years old, is at 93% Battery health (measured by current battery charge capacity / "ideal" battery charge capacity). My 5 year old iPad 2 is at 88% battery charge capacity, both measured using the "Battery Life" App, that several people have mentioned agrees with the Apple "Genius Bar" battery Diagnostics.

    18. Re:Bad battery tech by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 1

      For one the phone battery is always pushed to 100% charge and it is kept there for extended periods of time.

      Maybe in a crappy Android phone.

      But in iPhones (and other Apple battery-operated equipment), Apple only charges the battery up to the industry-recommended limit of around 90% (IIRC), to avoid overcharge issues. So, when your iPhone/iPad/MacBook shows 100% battery charge, it is actually at or around that "industry maximum" charge for LiOn batteries.

      Here's some non-Apple-biased information supporting what I am saying (and curiously enough, what Apple themselves recommend and say:

      https://www.notebookcheck.net/...

      Now compare that to what Apple says:

      https://www.apple.com/batterie...

      https://www.apple.com/batterie...

      And some good discussions about this topic:

      https://discussions.apple.com/...

      https://discussions.apple.com/...

    19. Re:Bad battery tech by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2

      It's pretty bad if you've been taking care of your battery (for example, not letting it fall below 50% of full charge capacity most of the time). My current laptop is down less than 20% after four years. Tesla does this automatically. Their 'empty' capacity is nothing like actually flat, which is why they are able to provide a software update that increases the range at the expense of battery life. I'm not sure what they're doing now, but I seem to recall that the first generation reported that the batteries were empty when they were down to 50% capacity.

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    20. Re:Bad battery tech by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Incorrect. Tesla cells, on a full charge-discharge, are rated for 3000 cycles. Panasonic don't lie about their batteries, that really is the absolute minimum you will get. Anyway, 3000 cycles, let's say 250 miles per cycle, that's 750,000 miles.

      Apple are saying 80% after two years is normal. 80% is end of life for these batteries, it's the same metric that Panasonic uses. So to wear your Tesla battery out in two years you would have to do 375,000 miles a year, or about 1000 miles a day on average.

      I'm sure someone will pop up to tell us that they do 1000 miles 7 days a week 365 days a year, but basically phones in general and iPhones in particular are about an order of magnitude worse on expected battery lifetime.

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    21. Re:Bad battery tech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      apple is not a reliable source of any real tech information.

    22. Re:Bad battery tech by omfglearntoplay · · Score: 1

      Knowing what to do with batteries to keep a good life on them stresses me out. Consider this. A nearly opposite position was taken by a drone battery "expert", who obsesses and lives by the "keep the charge at 50% when not in use" and acts like any amount of time at a high charge is bad for the battery. Double check me, but it also seems like he points to not allowing it to hang at 1% or 0% for any length of time, but any temporary drop to 5 or 10% isn't a big deal. I found the link:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

      Also, DJI drone manufactuer user "paper/owner" guides say do not drop below 20% for best battery life and store at 50% charge.

      I'm with you on the laptop thing though. Many laptops that never use their battery seem to have good batteries, and they stay at 100% charge for years.

      It's really hard to know what to believe, so I try to meet somewhere in the middle. I always store things long term at 50%, I try not to run many cycles on my batteries, and I try not to let them get below 20%.

    23. Re:Bad battery tech by omfglearntoplay · · Score: 1

      When I say "and they stay at 100% charge for years" on laptops, I meant to say that I've seen laptops that were plugged into a wall for years (charge at 100%)and never used their battery, seem to have great batteries when you unplug them from the wall and use them. Whereas laptops that are on the road a lot definitely see their batteries worsen.

    24. Re:Bad battery tech by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because it has been proven in the wake of the hurricanes in 2017 that Tesla is withholding the full size of the battery from the user in order to make sure that range/performance doesn't visibly degrade.

    25. Re:Bad battery tech by Agripa · · Score: 1

      Because a Tesla and other (but not all) Electric vehicles have battery conditioning technology that is not economical or practical (with regards to weight) on mobile devices.

      What? Battery conditioning in this case amounts to charge balancing which is impossible when the battery only has a one cell in series; there is literally nothing to balance. Controlling battery charge and discharge voltage and current is completely feasible and done on mobile devices or at least good ones. You do not for instance want to over or under charge the battery.

  2. Good Battery Management by GoRK · · Score: 4, Informative

    While I don't think it's necessarily right to "hide" it from people, good Li-Ion battery management does unfortunately require monitoring and limiting consumption rate in a lot of circumstances. Lithium batteries work best and can deliver the most current around 35-45C which is great since we tend to keep our phones close to our bodes and thus they stay at a good temperature. But a cold battery, a nearly empty battery, and an old battery all have severely diminished current capacity. Except for overcharging or overdraining a lithium cell, nothing will destroy it faster than pulling too much current than the current environment permits.

    The problem with our phones is that we want them to be as small as reasonable, we want them to work full throttle for the longest amount of time possible, and we want them to be highly reliable. This is sort of a "pick two" scenario because you can't really have all three.

    Tesla cars do a great job of giving the driver feedback about battery current limits BTW; there is a gague that shows you when you are being limited due to temperature or state of charge and as the battery ages the "full" capacity given in "rated miles" does diminish. As an example, an S100D will pull 500+ kW on a 100% full, new, warm battery, but on a very cold day with a low SOC it can be limited to as little as 150kW. Although this is sometimes not what people really want, they also in this case want a battery that will last for as many as 40 or 50 thousand charge cycles. Perhaps phones should figure out a way to give user feedback in the battery icon in a similar way. or allow the suers to set their own limits to optimize battery health.

    Or perhaps phones should just put way bigger batteries in them and only let people cycle them between 20% and 80% true capacity. This would be fantasticlly good for battery health but can you imagine the uproar?

    1. Re:Good Battery Management by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's been many years since I REALLY wanted my phone to be thinner. In fact, the last couple of iterations I think my phone is too thin to comfortably hold. Even after putting a typical case on my phone I think it's too thin. Sure, I can buy a thicker case, but why not just give me a better battery? I struggle to get through a full day without plugging in at some point, and I'm not typically a heavy phone user. I've had several iphones and currently have a Samsung S8. I'd gladly buy a thicker phone with a better battery

    2. Re:Good Battery Management by Immerman · · Score: 1

      >we want them to be as small as reasonable
      I quite agree. But am I alone in thinking that the vast majority have gone well beyond that point? It's a rare phone that wouldn't benefit from being twice the thickness with 3x the battery life. Maybe they could even use that added thickness to include some structural components so the things could take more of a beating.

      I still have my original-model TI-85 from 1992 - it doesn't get as much use anymore, but it took a heck of a beating through 10 years of school and another 15 in the office, and is still going strong. Seem to remember hearing it was designed to be able to drive over it (with the cover on) and probably not damage it - though that may have been an urban legend inspired by its toughness. In comparison a modern hi-end "phablet" smartphone costs considerably more, has about the same footprint, but breaks if you look at it funny.

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    3. Re:Good Battery Management by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While I don't think it's necessarily right to "hide" it from people, good Li-Ion battery management does unfortunately require monitoring and limiting consumption rate in a lot of circumstances. Lithium batteries work best and can deliver the most current around 35-45C which is great since we tend to keep our phones close to our bodes and thus they stay at a good temperature. But a cold battery, a nearly empty battery, and an old battery all have severely diminished current capacity. Except for overcharging or overdraining a lithium cell, nothing will destroy it faster than pulling too much current than the current environment permits.

      C rate of lion zoo batteries even crappy ones in cell phones is many times what phones are capable of consuming well into low voltage knee.

      The problem with our phones is that we want them to be as small as reasonable, we want them to work full throttle for the longest amount of time possible, and we want them to be highly reliable. This is sort of a "pick two" scenario because you can't really have all three.

      The problem is not easily being able to plop in a new battery when your existing one takes a shit.

      Perhaps phones should figure out a way to give user feedback in the battery icon in a similar way. or allow the suers to set their own limits to optimize battery health.

      Or perhaps phones should just put way bigger batteries in them and only let people cycle them between 20% and 80% true capacity. This would be fantasticlly good for battery health but can you imagine the uproar?

      Offering users technical feedback about excuses for why the widget they spent a metric shitload of money on sucks ass quite spectacularly misses the point.

      The solution is simply to stop making shitty products that don't work. According to public polling 90% of iPhone users shove their ultra slim at all costs masterpieces in fugly bulky rubberized cases made by the lowest bidder yet Apple insists on THIN THIN THIN at all costs. If batteries lasted a few days or weeks at a time nobody would care about biased gas gauges.

    4. Re:Good Battery Management by ckatko · · Score: 3, Interesting

      For some perspective:

        - My laptop is a chromebook switched to linux. From 2013.
        - I've used it almost every day.
        - My battery capacity reports: 45.3 Wh (design)
        - It currently reports: 41.3 Wh (when full)
        - Percent difference of ~9.24% over 5 years of constant use

      So why the hell are cellphone batteries dying so much faster? Are they higher density for more initial capacity, at the cost of quicker wear and reduction of capacity? Because if you can lose over 20% of an iPhone battery in two years, that's a pretty stark difference to my laptop.

      I had to replace my Wife's iPhone S5 battery (before this whole craziness) a 1 year ago or so.

    5. Re:Good Battery Management by GoRK · · Score: 1

      I still have my TI-85 purchased in 1992 same as you. While I agree it's very durable and nice and still works it is a bit clunky and it's bigger than it needs to be. Heck there is a lot of empty space inside there- I have had mine apart and modified a number of times (including massively overclocking the z80)

      I do agree with you on the absurd race to produce overly stupidly thin phones. The iPad has a "camera bump" for fucks sake. good design does not automatically guarantee good ergonomics. A slightly beefier phone with a better and longer lasting battery would sell very well. As a business customer of the iPhone I would buy 20 of them immediately. How can they be missing this?

    6. Re:Good Battery Management by Kopp · · Score: 2

      Why would they bother, they can sell them overpriced phones that would require replacement sooner. Their business is to sell as much as they can... Especially now that they are all the hype, they don't need to compete. And since no one else is actually competing on that market of non disposable phones, or almost no one (you have things like the fairphone, but the firepower behind is not strong enough to provide on both sides of repairable and actually up to date to begin with) Why would you want people to replace battery for 60$ when you can instead sell them a new phone for at least 500 ?

    7. Re:Good Battery Management by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or perhaps phones should just put way bigger batteries in them and only let people cycle them between 20% and 80% true capacity. This would be fantasticlly good for battery health but can you imagine the uproar?

      That depends on who's doing it, if Android device manufacturers did it first I don't imagine there would be much uproar, if Apple pioneered this idea the Slashdot Apple patrol's choir would scream so loud and so shrill they'd shatter glass in nearby buildings.

    8. Re:Good Battery Management by tlhIngan · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So why the hell are cellphone batteries dying so much faster? Are they higher density for more initial capacity, at the cost of quicker wear and reduction of capacity? Because if you can lose over 20% of an iPhone battery in two years, that's a pretty stark difference to my laptop.

      Because simply, your laptop has more batteries.

      Cellphones have one cell, and are often used from full to dead on a daily basis, which is a very hard operating regimen, and basically all the wear happens on that one cell.

      Laptops rarely are operated like that - most sit on the charger all day, and maybe autonomous for a couple of hours, where it may undergo a slight discharge from 100% to say, 60%, then put back on charge. This imposes very little wear on the battery, and even then, laptops use multiple cells, so the wear generally gets distributed over more cells.

      Think of it this way - a Tesla uses the same kind of cells, and basically you expect to get about 10 years of life out of it before it hits around 80% capacity or so. That's because there are thousands of cells and each is carefully managed by the onboard computer. Then after that, you can take those cells and put them in a battery pack and run a house off of them, even at their reduced capacity, they can run a house pretty well. That's because the load a house brings on a battery will be much less than a car, so you may get another 10 years out of those cells before they drop to 40% or so (and you probably won't notice the capacity drop if the battery gets you through the night before the solar array on your roof recharges them)..

      Battery ageing is determined by how hard you run the loads - how fast and nasty you are at charging them - something cellphones do quite aggressively because you can have peak loads of amps coming out and fast chargers don't help that get you to 80% in half an hour. A laptop is used far more gently comparatively speaking, at least since the load is spread out, and the charge current is spread out as well, so the batteries are treated much more gently.

      Electric cars even more so, despite ludicrous mode, the actual load imposed on one individual battery is probably more like it loafing around, and then retirement as a house battery is like pampering it in old age.

    9. Re:Good Battery Management by antdude · · Score: 1

      What about UPSes like from APC? They don't seem to last long enough and have to be replaced even though rarely used. :(

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
    10. Re:Good Battery Management by jiriw · · Score: 1

      Most UPSes use lead gel battery technology (which has sulphuric acid as an electrolyte). An entirely different beast than Lithium ion cells. Lead cells that are used (too) sparingly have sulphate crystal buildup. Those crystals, when they get too big, act as insulators, diminishing the peak power performance of the cells.

    11. Re:Good Battery Management by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2

      My only real complaint about Apple's new model is that they didn't do it from the start. I don't have any issues with them throttling performance to prevent instability, I do have a problem with them throttling performance to hide the fact that batteries are dying early and avoid replacing them under warranty. Now that a user can notice slower performance and see that they're experiencing it because their battery is dying, they can have a conversation with Apple about whether their battery replacement should be covered by the warranty. Before that, they would likely have thought that their phone needed replacing.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    12. Re:Good Battery Management by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      The type of device isn't really relevant, it's how the battery is managed.

      If you only charge to 90% and never below 10%, a lithium ion battery will last much longer. If you keep it close to the ideal temperature, it will last a lot longer.

      For example, some laptop batteries last a very long time because they are kept away from sources of heat and the manufacturer limits them to between 10 and 90% charge. Others might die fairly quickly because they are right next to the laptop's major sources of heat and the laptop needs to draw on them during normal operation because the tiny thin charger can't supply enough power on its own. Some manufacturers allow you to charge to 100% and drain down to 1%, so they can claim to get 20% more battery life than their rivals.

      It's interesting that Apple says 80% after two years is normal, because that suggests that they are managing the battery very poorly. 80% is considered end of life for rechargable batteries.

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    13. Re:Good Battery Management by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      My battery capacity reports: 45.3 Wh (design)

      Was that a measurement made when you got it, or what they put in the spec sheet?

      They usually under-rate the battery to preserve it. For example, a 30kWh car will probably only have 28kWh usable. A 3500mAh phone will probably only have 3300mAh usable.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    14. Re:Good Battery Management by antdude · · Score: 1

      Ah, interesting. Thanks. :)

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  3. an iphone may require more power... by gTsiros · · Score: 1

    ... than a lithium ion battery/cell can deliver? Even if aged?

    the hell?

    --
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    1. Re:an iphone may require more power... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      this is exactly the design defect, a laptop cpu run by a phone sized battery

  4. Single Line Fix by dohzer · · Score: 2, Funny

    perf_degrade = 0;

    1. Re:Single Line Fix by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Then we'd just see lawsuits saying Apple's phones continuously rebooting made them buy a new phone when all they needed was a new battery.

      Having experienced this in the past (old 3GS turning itself off randomly, often in the middle of calls... it was 3 years old at the time), the new battery health tools look like a vast improvement... now I'll know exactly what the problem is instead of having to guess.

  5. Two negative Apple articles in a row by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What is this amateur hour?

    Oh itâ(TM)s Beau never mind

    1. Re:Two negative Apple articles in a row by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 1

      Articles are not negative, only descriptive. Comments tend to be negative towards Apple, but who's fault is that? Apple hid a slowdown "feature" that was rather a "stop using that device it's too slow, time to buy a new one" injunction in disguise.

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    2. Re:Two negative Apple articles in a row by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Even when it's "slowed down" it's still faster than the concurrent Samsung.

  6. Hyperlink LOL. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Somewhat irrelevant to the story, but I just wanted to point out how shitty flat UI design has gotten if we're actually at the point where we're confusing clickable "buttons" (which is what borderless coloured text often denotes in iOS) with hyperlinks.

    It's clear the author doesn't know what to call said text- it's a button without a border after all, so they're reaching for terms that apply, even though hyperlink is a web term. This should not be happening with offline software. If it's something you can press, it should look like a goddam button. Jobs used to pride himself in creating systems anyone could use with little or no prior experience. It's pretty sad Apple has reached a point where people don't even know what to call their GUI widgets anymore, because the functions don't line up with the graphical representation anymore.

  7. Too bad they just won't replace the batteries by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Their $29 scam is a scam since they don't do it, but only announced it to get out from under several class action lawsuits. They refused to replace my battery since I have a small chip in the glass. A coworker took the six 6S and 6S Plus iPhones we have for testing into a store, and Apple found excuses to deny a battery replacement, even at the full price, for all of them. It sucks that all of our newer iPhones suddenly drop from around 50% battery to 1% in just a matter of a few minutes.

    1. Re: Too bad they just won't replace the batteries by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Youâ(TM)re naive if you expected them to replace batteries.

  8. More advanced options needed by CGordy · · Score: 1

    I was recently in at -20 degrees Celsius in the Swiss Alps, and my old iPhone would die unexpectedly during use (or, the battery would drop 50% for five minutes of use). However, having since come back to Australia, I don't want my phone to throttle based on the one week a year I spend skiing - the system should permit more customisation than either just "on or off".

    1. Re:More advanced options needed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It sounds like you have better things to do with your life than micro-manage your iPhone's battery usage patterns.

    2. Re:More advanced options needed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Like whinge on Slashdot? ;)
      If you go somewhere unusually cold, switch on power management. Switch it off again once you have left.
      If you go somewhere unusually hot, switch off power management. Switch it on again once you have left.

      Apple could automate the process, which is what they tried to do in the first place but that just led to a bunch of law suits from avaricious morons.

    3. Re:More advanced options needed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      " avaricious morons"? You mean apple customers right? Because i think thats who is joining these lawsuits. The cult sure quickly turns on their own.

  9. A disgruntled half assed effort by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That UI change is so minimal and useless that it's as if they're doing it out of spite just like Steve Jobs reluctantly gave out free $1 bumper cases to shut up people complaining about antenna gate.

  10. What am I missing? by oic0 · · Score: 1

    Don't the batteries naturally lose maximum output as they discharge? If a phone can't handle maximum performance anymore when it can't hold as much charge, how did it do it before as the charge went down ?

    1. Re:What am I missing? by Paradise+Pete · · Score: 1

      how did it do it before

      Like any phone, if the voltage dropped the phone shut down. So what they did instead is reduce the maximum draw in order to maintain the necessary voltage. It made the phones more useful, not less, despite what you'll read in these comments.

    2. Re:What am I missing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      apple has a design flaw in their phones from the 6 up. In a specs race to have something to brag about apple designed a cpu draws too power and because they are cheap; bought the cheapest batteries and they are under powered. Too keep their phone from being totally useless after 2 years ( and keep up their resale values) they underhandedly added this throttling code. The magical side effect of this was now after 2 years your phone slows down so people think its too old and buy a new phone. Had apple left it alone the phone would have not held a charge all day and people would probably realise its just their battery and replace that instead of the entire phone. Anything else is just apple and their cultist smoke and mirrors.

  11. "I don't need a removable battery" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Personally can't wait to shove batterygate down the face of next person to seriously attempt to justify purchasing insanely expensive gear without user swappable batteries by asserting replacement is not necessary over the life of the product.

    Buying something costing hundreds to over a thousand dollars and you can't even swap out the battery is a reflection of the intelligence of the buyer.

    Corporations think you're a stupid pushover. They are right.

    1. Re: "I don't need a removable battery" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes because a battery that might need to be replaced every 2-3 years is such a big deal.

      I guess the real question that should be asked is why do iPhones have an average lifespan of use of around 3 years while android phones with their replaceable batteries are usually replaced after 18 months?

    2. Re: "I don't need a removable battery" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes because a battery that might need to be replaced every 2-3 years is such a big deal.

      We have a winner. Your absolutely correct. This is a big deal. Not being able to swap batteries yourself means you have to pay someone else to do it with labor costs exceeding physical cost of the battery.

      I guess the real question that should be asked is why do iPhones have an average lifespan of use of around 3 years while android phones with their replaceable batteries are usually replaced after 18 months?

      People buy new phones often because they want them not because they have to. For many years now Apple has been incrementing version numbers while selling the same tired old shit. People are not upgrading their iPhones because there is literally no point or advantage in doing so.

      Case in point purchased my current phone an LG G Pro 4 years ago and it is still working perfectly today. Over 300 GB of storage, full HD display, LTE. Why the fuck would I get rid of it? Have extra batteries for it including a big honking 10000 mAh I plop in when going on trips which has proven itself to be quite useful. I have no plans on getting a new phone anytime soon. New models have more misfeatures than actual features... Vendors have become obsessed with flipping their own customers off.

  12. Extra field needed by jez9999 · · Score: 2

    "Maximum capacity of battery if we'd made the phone 1mm thicker and weren't trying to make it the size of a credit card".

  13. Re:The Trump fix is coming. Grand Jury Indictments by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Because it is Off Topic

  14. Re:The Trump fix is coming. Grand Jury Indictments by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why was this perfectly valid statement modded down?

    Because Trump is not a trader. He couldn't trade his ass out off a paper bag.

    PS: he's a traitor

  15. It should be illegal... by nightfire-unique · · Score: 1

    ... to sell a device into which a battery has been glued.

    --
    A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC